‘I don’t strife for long titles. I do make sure that every single title has purpose and meaning.’ You apparently said this not that long after the release of your first album.
Josh Scogin: The first album’s title is pretty much just breaking away from all the dying and bleeding. I had basically reached a sort of time in my life when I thought that every music put out in the heavy genre was so negative. So almost in some satirical way I wanted to do the complete opposite. Everything is alive, everything is breathing. Nothing is dead, and nothing is bleeding is the perfect example of that.
Your first album had pretty long song titles. Your second displayed a poem when reading the first eight tracks through. How do you come up with such things?
Josh: Well. I don’t know. They sort of make themselves. The Fiancée started as simple as a little remark by our bassist. It’s some folklore thing which was about to be just one title. But at the time I didn’t want to do that all over again. So I made it a change for myself to not do the same and we broke it up in different titles. We put the songs under the titles and not the other way around.
You therefore matched the lyrics to the titles so it would fit. The lyrics made whatever the title should be.
Josh: every song title just sort of stands apart. It’s not something you plan in advance to call this song like this and another one like that. The Fiancée was the cornerstone of the whole album. When we came with these titles, the whole album just built itself up. One line after another contradicts itself. It’s everywhere, even in the lyrics. One line contradicts the next, or there might be a twist in the plot. It all sort of builds on each other. And we could just watch the pieces fall in place.
It also made the cover as well.
Josh: I told the guy who’d do the artwork about the whole contradiction thing and he had the great idea of putting in old pictures, so old that they couldn’t have had technology in there. Yet at our version of the pictures, we put in little technological things, having contradictions all over.
‘Creating something out of nothing is a basic concept of art.’
Josh: where did you hear that one? But it’s true. You always take something that doesn’t exist. It can be literally nothing or a pile of junk when you first see it. But then you go and create something with it. We take songs that don’t exist and we write them and make them. If it doesn’t match the eventual record, we drop them. Imagining and putting a piece of yourself together with whatever other things you’ve found is what art is.
Then even your music is a piece of unique art. Do you plan on making a certain kind of music? Or do you make whatever you want and see at the end what it eventually became?
Josh: People have a need to classify everything. They even tell us we’re metal, but we’re not. We’ve toured with metal bands, but that’s something completely different and doesn’t make us the same. It’s more like the punk rock genre. They also do what they want to do. There’s no set pattern and we can expand our boundaries. Making sure everyone knows we do what we want to do.
As a perfect example: you used a guitar riff from Nirvana, had a song with harmonicas on it and invited Hayley (Williams from Paramore) to be featured on your album. Those are three completely different things.
Josh: The Nirvana riff was more of an homage than anything. We could have used any riff but we figured that short riff would be enough. Then one day, Aaron Weiss from Mewithoutyou appeared to be around when we were recording and I thought it was pretty hilarious to have such a lyrical genius featured on our record in a way nobody would expect. So he grabbed his harmonica and played. I can tell you he’s actually not even an amazing player.
The Nirvana riff is hard to notice and the harmonica thing is just hilarious. But with the rising popularity of Hayley and her band Paramore, it could even be seen as a promotional stunt to have her featured.
Josh: Absolutely not. Hayley is just a friend of ours who we invited to the studio. There was a part on the album we wanted to do something different with. To let the listeners hear something else than just my voice. I bet that after about eight songs you’ve heard the best of me and you want something else for a change. To contradict my voice we wanted something pretty with notes and an actual melody. Raspy screaming contradicts Hayley’s singing voice. In the beginning we never thought lets have this, this and this. Just ride the train and go with it.
You’re a Christian band, Paramore’s not. Do your beliefs influence your music a lot?
Josh: As with any great art you take what’s inside of you and you put it out into the world. It’ll be part of you and represent who you are. Come out as yours. I don’t try to make others feel uncomfortable. I just talk about my experiences and my life and I’m not forcing anything upon others.
To the Europeans the Christiancore label is something typically American. We don’t have many religious bands out here.
Josh: Well, I don’t know if it’s American, I don’t know the genre either. (smiles) I think the media spins it like that. I don’t know how music can be Christian music. If someone covers our music, won’t it still be a Christian song? I don’t know. I never understood that. But it seems people have to have their titles. It’s not hardcore, it is post-hardcore-metal. Whatever man, it’s just music. To me it’s heavy or not heavy and I think we fit in the heavy part.
Labeling is common. Everyday people invent new names distinguish them from the others.
Josh: I’m a Christian but it’s not that we hear other people’s beliefs through their music. There’s not something like Buddhist pop. (laughs) The media just noticed we shared our beliefs. But it doesn’t affect me personally. If people want to label me like that, they can. Although I’ll never understand how a set of notes and chords can be anti-or pro-Christ.
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